During the mid twentieth century sexual abuse of children was unveiled to the extent that it could neither be ignored, nor passed off as fiction that existed only in the minds of hysterical women. Gradually society began to accept that child sex abuse was a reality and the volume of credible and corroborated disclosures ruled out any possibility of our journeying back to the comfort zone of unawareness. As we attempted to manage this painful and incomprehensible reality, we needed to put some distance between ourselves and those vile destroyers of childrens’ innocence. So we readily embraced the stranger danger mantra and created the notion that there exists two groups of people. People who don’t abuse children, the ‘good guys’ and the child abusers and perverts the ‘bad guys.’ And in order to distinguish clearly between the two groups we made the bad guys monstrously different to ‘normal’ people and felt reassured that the malevolent bad guys were easily recognisable by their sinister looks and deviant behaviour. It is in this illusion of the ‘good’ and the ‘bad’ guys being mutually exclusive that we established the perfect hiding place, often in plain view, for those who seek to abuse children.

The painful truth is that there is no exclusive group of safe adults. Bad guys are some times good guys and vice versa. Men and woman who sometimes do very good things and who have very good jobs and reputations also sexually abuse children. One of the reasons Jimmy Savile was able to abuse so many for so long is because he’d manipulated and/or earned his place in the ‘good guy’ category and it simply couldn’t compute that he could also be one of the ‘bad guys.’

Having worked with sexually abused adults and children for over eighteen years, I have learned much about why victims of sexual abuse don’t tell anybody at the time or were not heard if they tried to. All too often the reason lies in the perpetrator being perceived as being one of the good guys, pillars of society and upstanding members of their community or conversely that the victim is perceived as one of the bad guys, off the rails, delinquent, promiscuous etc and the odds are stacked against being believed. Other reasons include fear or threats about what will happen to them, their pets, or loved ones that keep them from telling. Other times the trauma results in amnesia which prevents victims from ‘remembering’ overwhelming experiences of sexual abuse. Many survivors have told me they that they felt complete shock at first and that after the shock wore off they felt disgusted and so ashamed that they didn’t want to believe what was happening themselves and certainly didn’t want anyone else to know. Sex offenders exist in ‘respectable families,’ within all classes, cultures and creeds and across the whole spectrum of professions. As well as sexually abusing children they also work as nursery workers, teachers, service men and women, clergy, nurses, doctors, surgeons, police officers, company directors, social workers, care workers, councillors and counsellors, managers, shop assistants, researchers, journalists, accountants, estate agents, sports men and woman, they work in government and in the public as well as the private sectors and they occupy positions of trust on the ground as well as higher up the chains of command. All people working with children and vulnerable adults are required to have CRB checks undertaken before commencing employment. Would Jimmy Savile have had a CRB certificate? Of course he would, unfortunately all predatory paedophiles will be granted a CRB certificate unless they have convictions for any of their crimes. So the bad news is that abusers are to be found everywhere but the good news is that not everyone is an abuser. Widespread public recognition and exposé of the ‘good guy’ cover would be a huge step forward in terms of child protection. Abusers often straddle both the good and bad guy camps and reluctance or refusal to be honest about this supports a culture that enables predatory paedophiles to operate unimpeded.